I find I had problems with the crop tool when I cropped to 100x100 with a pretty large picture with no stages in between; to sharpen it to clarity seemed to make it too sharp. Then again, I sometimes have a hard time with sharpness because I make icons on a computer with an old monitor; so maybe what you see as smoothness is just me not sharpening enough!

OMG, the first icon tutorial I read where someone explained how to use actions, it completely changed my life. You mean I don't have to manually duplicate my background and set it to all these different things and adjust levels EVERY SINGLE TIME I make an icon?!

The lights in those icons are textures just set to Screen. Im'ma zip up a folder of the textures I use most an upload it here in a bit; my sister is downloading Sherlock on my computer right now and my bandwidth is at like nothing.